Company Receives Clearance for Phase I Safety Trial for Treatment of Macular Degeneration. Alan Wells and Cecelia Yates have collaborated on and off for nearly two decades at the University of Pittsburgh developing a class of synthetic proteins that act as switches to turn off the wound healing process. Now, after nearly 7 years of pre-clinical work, the company co-founded and launched from their research has entered a Phase 1 clinical trial with its therapy for the treatment of age-related macular degeneration, also known as wet-AMD.
Three Pitt innovation teams each received $100,000 awards to continue on the path from the lab to market at the 10th annual Pitt Innovation Challenge (PInCh) sponsored by the Clinical and Translational Science Institute (CTSI).
UPMC Enterprises Translational Sciences and the University of Pittsburgh Office of Innovation and Entrepreneurship are teaming on a second request for proposals for sponsored research projects in specific therapeutic areas. We are highlighting the two projects funded in the first RFP. We previously featured a project to develop a therapy for progressive supranuclear palsy (PSP), a debilitating neurodegenerative disease with no effective treatments. Now we feature a gene therapy from the lab of Dwi Kemaladewi, Assistant Professor of Pediatrics.
13 years after launching a business pitch competition for Pitt healthcare technologies, Pitt alum Michael Wells reflects on the growth of the university’s culture of innovation and entrepreneurship Michael Wells had already developed an innovation mindset while earning both a bachelor’s and master’s degree from the University of Pittsburgh School of Education. (EDUC’90, EDUC’92G)
Pitt and UPMC, through its Translational Sciences division, are once again collaborating to provide funding support for therapeutics projects that need further de-risking experiments to determine their clinical and commercial potential. We are featuring two projects that received funding from the first request for proposals from 2022.